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People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds
- creaghpatr 8y agoThen again, people older than 65 share the most stuff period, if my relatives are any indication.
- pimmen 8y agoAge was apparently a better predictor than total number of links shared, according to the article.
- yorwba 8y agoMaybe older people share disproportionately more news content? I tried to look at the study to find out what kind of links they even included in the evaluation, but the link in TFA only goes to the publication's home page. Edit: it's here http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586 Edit': as I thought, their dataset includes all kinds of links, but they do the same analysis for sharing hard news and don't find significant age effects. It's table S14 in the supplementary material http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2019/01/07/5.1.eaau4586.DC1 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2019/01/07/5.1....
- PaulHoule 8y agoLong before there was Facebook, back in the age of AOL, my older relatives would share endless e-mails about things they thought were funny. It seems like anything about Viagra would get a laugh.
- pimmen 8y agoAnd they are more likely to vote than young people. We really have to work to make elderly people more digitally literate and young people more involved in politics, I reckon it will require the removal of multiple barriers (like, oh I don't know, not having the election on a weekday that makes no difference for retired people but all the difference in the world to minimum wage employees living pay check to pay check? And make it harder for ISPs to screw over rural people?).
- funkythings 8y agoYoung people have always been less interested in politics. Just because you/we don't like how the elderly are voting, we don't have to make this a bigger issue than it is.
- pjc50 8y ago> Young people have always been less interested in politics. 1968 would like a word.
- LanceH 8y agoYea, they showed up in record numbers to vote for....Nixon was it?
- jessaustin 8y agoI hope you're referring to the civil rights movement, and not to those who elected Nixon so we could have a Drug War and stay in Vietnam for another seven years.
- refurb 8y agoNixon was the president that extricated the US from Vietnam through the peace talks. And the US' involvement only lasted another 5 years, not 7 years.
- dplgk 8y agoIs digital literacy the problem? Believing that a prominent politician ran a prostitution ring is a basic reasoning problem. I think we'll have to wait until they die off.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoThey are taking Dominique Strauss-Kahn down for exactly that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn
- Liquix 8y agoIt makes sense - they grew up in a time where news was (relatively) reliable/truthful, so perhaps don't have the same "this may not be true" skepticism that younger generations have.
- taeric 8y agoSorta. Propaganda is not a new thing.
- api 8y agoNo, but I think the parent is correct. I grew up with the Internet. I was reading wacky conspiracy theories in my teens. It made me more skeptical of virtually anything I see in print since I learned how easy it is to create a BS narrative and fit details into it. I also learned what propaganda is, how it works, and how prevalent it is. Older generations grew up with a one-way opaque screen preaching to them. Obviously not everything on that screen was true, but when it was called "news" it was held to some standard and so was probably more likely to be true than not. They also had no way of delving deeper, no way of querying or seeking out an alternative opinion or discussing it with other members of the audience. That generation grew up trusting things on screens.
- ben_w 8y agoOn the other other hand, I’ve seen a lot of people thinking they can determine the truth by weighing various commentators against each other and deciding which seems more likely, which I’ve just found Isaac Asimov used in Foundation (1951!) to characterise attitudes of decline. Not sure I’ve noticed a pattern, age or otherwise, with such attitudes.
- taeric 8y agoI think I agree, but you are probably over stating how many of them grew up with television. Now, the same points generally hold with radio, as well. I was just saying that propaganda is not new. Of course, I don't know that this research is claiming these folks are the most misinformed. So, I could be taking it in a pointless direction, as well.
- mcculley 8y agoIt makes sense that people who discovered the Internet through Facebook and Twitter at a later age would be more susceptible to memes. I have been wondering if this will get better or worse. Once all Internet users have been using it since a very early age, will they be more skeptical and responsible? Or will they be more easily influenced? I have been wondering what an elementary school course in memetics and evolutionary psychology should look like. Kids need memetic inoculation, not just to protect from fake news, but all kinds of automated marketing.
- maldusiecle 8y agoYou don't need knowledge of evo-psych or "memetics" (whatever that means) to distinguish most sketchy sites from reputable ones. It may be tricky to distinguish more carefully-assembled fake news sites, but most of these bogus websites/Facebook groups are easy to pick out via stylistic cues alone.
- ben_w 8y agoI think it’s unwise to rely on the incompetence of fake news websites. Compare two UK newspapers, The Guardian and The Daily Mail. They are both well-known and have popular domains which have been around for ages. Considering only their contradictions on the topic of Brexit, one of them must be about as dangerously out of touch with reality as it is possible to be. Which one? I know which one I believe, but I am not a lawyer, a trade negotiator, or a politician.
- maldusiecle 8y agoIf you can't tell the difference between The Daily Mail and The Guardian based on stylistic cues, I don't know what to tell you. It is true that stylistic cues won't tell you everything. The rest, unfortunately, is a lot harder to teach. Avoiding the obviously-shoddy sites is sufficient as a start; the rest is really going to be dependent on particular knowledge in areas like science, history, etc. EDIT: Kinda surprised at the downvotes I'm getting here. Have you _looked_ at the Daily Mail frontpage?
- wybiral 8y agoElderly people are frequently the target of scams. I'm curious what the age statistics for people who clicked on Nigerian Prince scams and viagra spam were like before social media.
- anovikov 8y agoWhat's wrong about the viagra spam? Did it actually scam people out of anything? I thought these were the actual e-shops selling actual (generic and probably of dubious quality) stuff, just did it in an overly pushy way because of oversaturated market.
- luxuryballs 8y agoI read this as “owners of CNN and Vox are mostly over 65” and had a giggle.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- PaulHoule 8y agoI think people older than age 65 are more interested in "news" period. Older people also vote so they are worth targeting, particularly by right-wing organizations that would like to mobilize them.
- sametmax 8y agoAnd since they are the ones with the least experience with the internet and the smaller capacity to adapt/learn/sort a lot of info, the whole thing make sense.
- PaulHoule 8y agoSome oldsters have been using the internet since before there was a world wide web so they may have more experience than youngsters. Some of them have been sharing memes on AOL since before some HN readers were born. So far as cognitive capacity, I don't know. I've seen young people refuse to learn from other people's mistakes, take deadly risks, etc. When it comes to the epistemology of these people the right way to think about it is the emotional gain they get out of the whole thing. That has nothing to do with the internet. Listen to the Rush Limbaugh show this afternoon and you'll realize that anyone who gets a kick out of that will be vulnerable to a particular strain of "false news". Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have been degrading the American political environment since Bill Clinton got elected, but it was only in 2016 that it became a monster that the Republican establishment could not control in the US. (And the center-right elsewhere)
- sametmax 8y agoGo to a school and an old folks house. Ask them to create an instagram account, take a picture, crop it, and post it online. Would you really try to defend the point of view that the kids wouldn't do much better ?
- PaulHoule 8y agoThat's instagram, which does lean young. My aunt Lucy in a nursing home has a phone and thinks that Facebook is the bee's knees -- she can keep up with what her family is up to. I get many "This email was sent with an iPhone" messages from oldsters. Nothing gets talked about in breathless tones in the New York Times (e.g. Apple products) unless it appeals to the 50+ set. Note how "fall detection" is a selling point of the new iWatch. If you'd been around long enough you'd notice that selling things to oldsters based on recapturing their youth or vicariously enjoying the youth of youngsters has been a big business for a long time. It had a lot to do with how baby boomers were celebrated in the 1960s (e.g. hippies did not read the New York Times, but oldsters did) Eventually boomers became the target audience and the breathless talk was about millennials. Gen X got skipped mercifully because there were too few of us to move the needle.
- rchaud 8y agoNot at all a surprise. The first time my dad used the Internet to look at used car ads on Craigslist, I found him trying to fight off a cascading series of popups (this was in the mid-2000s) that launched when he clicked the "You are our 1 millionth customer" ads. Older people who are new to the Internet may simply think it's regulated like TV and Radio commercials are. Couple that with how easy it is to target these demographics using an FB/Twitter advertiser account, and how they make up big chunks of the voting bloc, and you have a recipe for disaster.
- ideonexus 8y agoThis reminds me of when my father-in-law got a fullscreen pop-up claiming to have seized his computer unless he paid $20. While I was looking at it to figure out how to close the window, he said, "I've already paid them twice now!!!"
- b_t_s 8y agoIt's a failure to understand how any of it actually works. There was a comment higher up how many older people have memorized steps to complete tasks, but have no understanding of underlying concepts. Despite 2 decades of effort on my part, my father has paper notebooks full of step by step instructions how to do things with his computer, but not a shred of understanding of any of the underlying concepts. Also, he was shocked to learn that the internet runs on money and advertising. He can do about 5 common tasks on it, and he has strict instructions never to enter any personal or financial information into any computer.
- arayh 8y agoStudy says that damage to the prefrontal cortex in older adults can increase susceptibility to fraud and scams, which may be related to why older people share more fake news. [source] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4971060/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4971060/
- Eli_P 8y agoYou can search for J. Rogan with Robert Sapolsky podcast where doc said that either prefrontal or orbitofrontal cortex finishes developing at ~25 years old, so brain can learn about environment and extrapolate accumulated experience later throughout life. I think age bias is not appropriate, because youngsters could consume propaganda with memes, feeds and games as well, just through the different medium. What matters here is anxiety level and/or IQ.
- arayh 8y agoAdmittedly, there is definitely a precedent for youngsters who fall for fake news. I am reminded that a number of under-65s thought they could charge their iPhone in a household microwave, even though you would think that common sense would dictate otherwise. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2768976/Emergency-services-forced-step-iPhone-users-fall-internet-prank-explains-use-microwave-charge-phone.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2768976/Emergency-s...
- neuronexmachina 8y agoWoah, very interesting study, thanks for sharing.
- chaostheory 8y agoAnxiety can also increase for older adults https://www.livescience.com/8452-anxiety-increase-age.html https://www.livescience.com/8452-anxiety-increase-age.html (I can't find the original papers)
- sillyquiet 8y agoLike other commenters, this study jives with my experience with older relatives. I mean 'forwards from grandma' has been a thing forever, right? 'Bill Gates will give a nickel every time this is read' (remember email chains?), 'naked women get shared, but this heroic child won't get a single like', 'Like and Share if you stand with politician X', etc etc. Combine this with the targeted scamming of elderly from various Nigerian princes and jailed grandchildren, and there does seem to be a much greater degree of credulity with our current elderly generation. I think a more interesting study would be to figure out whether it's generational, a function of changing brain physiology as we age, or what.
- mu_killnine 8y agoI wonder if this study includes memes like that or only actual site links external to Facebook. I have similar experiences with older loved ones I'm friend with on Facebook and it's rare they send links. But I think the rampant meme-sharing of misinformation/disinformation is much more prevalent.
- CodeCube 8y agoI'm really really loathe to say this ... but in today's climate, "memes are news". I have 100% had the contents of memes thrown at me in a political discussion. I happen to be online a lot, so in many cases, I've seen the meme scroll by and it's easy both to realize what it is (fake propaganda), and easy to debunk ... but to those folks, it's as real as if delivered by Walter Cronkite's lips.
- wil421 8y agoThe last election really turned me off of social media. The amount of absolutely false memes and screenshots being shared by both sides was way too much. I recently saw some of the ads and memes being churned out by the Russian propaganda machine. I was not so surprised some of the stuff they created was the same crap people I knew were sharing as truth by intelligent yet older people.
- cmsonger 8y agoFortunately they tend to be retired so there is less impact to their lives to go vote on a Tuesday in the middle of the work week. Wait. What? Ha!
- anticensor 8y agoFor they are underexcited.
- simulate 8y agoThe elderly are generally more susceptible to internet fraud. Last summer the New Yorker had this story about how an 85 year old was scammed out of her life savings: My Mother and Her Scammer https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-mother-and-her-scammer https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-mother...
- TremendousJudge 8y agoNigerian prince scams and the like are much older than the internet though.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam
- btbuildem 8y agoHaving spent Christmas back home, I've come to the conclusion that people over 65 should not have the right to vote. You've had almost forty years of voting, you don't really have any future left, and your minds aren't what they used to be. Please stay out of it.
- dazc 8y agoSo, what you're saying is, people who have 40 years more experience of life than you have, people who've paid taxes for most of those years, people who sacrificed a better lifestyle so they could change your nappies, etc shouldn't vote because their political opinions don't chime with yours? You don't know it yet but a lot of what you think you know stems from fake news too.
- beat 8y agoDo they have 40 years of experience, or one year of experience 40 times?
- dazc 8y agoNot sure what your point is?
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoAh, the old "we changed your nappies so we know better than you" argument.
- Nasrudith 8y agoReally ageism is an area of accepted double standards - denying Alzheimer's patients the right to vote is considered absurd yet even college graduate minors cannot vote despite being proven more capable than average. Or rare absurdities like a minor charged as an adult who managed to get acquitted in spite of the situation's seriousness isn't allowed to vote because of lacking the capacity. Holding the elders to the same rationale is fair if not just - the situation isn't just for anyone affected but they aren't getting special treatment. To give an absurd example executing people for jaywalking is unjust but doing it to all regardless of station is fair. I believe in keeping voting sancrosanct mind you but I can see a rhetorical and logical point to it.
- danabrams 8y agoOverheard during the 2012 campaign in florida, between some octagenerians: I’m voting for that Mitt Romney because he’s a nice Protestant boy, not like the others. (Not that it matters, but Obama was the only Protestant in that race, Biden and Ryan are catholic, Romney is like the most famous Mormon).
- burfog 8y agoThey may be aware of all that and still disagree. Romney: technically, Mormons are protestant Biden: he isn't a believable Catholic unless he opposes abortion Obama: he actually slipped up and said "my Muslim faith" in an interview
- toolslive 8y agomaybe a black (or rather orange) swan skewed the results ;)
- tzjmetron 8y agoI can believe this - my old man is a sucker for these.
- burtonator 8y agoI've been thinking of building a 'fake news' app to embarrass people like this who share fake news. The idea is to have a legitimate looking site. The link would be something like 'thebostonreporter.com' where it looks like a real news URL and the content ALSO looks like a legitimate news site. The site would create news stories that confirm the bias of people who tend to share fake news. For example, "Hillary Clinton Convicted of Money Laundering in Boston Court" or something like that... Then we push it on social media. Once the links has gone out and has been distributed across social media we flip the content of the link and say, basically: "You've been the victim of fake news!" and explain what they did wrong and how to be more critical of links they share. PART of this is going to have to be to shame them. Another part is to make it clear that the next link they share MIGHT be another "fake news time bomb" that could revert and embarrass them again - hopefully making them reconsider sharing fake links in the future.
- brlewis 8y agoFrom the article: "Another study found that relatively few people clicked on fake news links — but that their headlines likely traveled much further via the News Feed, making it difficult to quantify their true reach." Relying on people clicking through to see the content might not work.
- snarf21 8y agoThis is a very interesting idea. This approach is similar to one the SEC did with ICOs to combat all the scam and fraud happening. I'm not sure how you determine when to do the flip. You would need a certain amount of people to see the fake news but these things cycle really quickly. If you wait one day, it may be too late as all that user's followers already saw the fake news and have moved on. I wonder if you could do a logarithmic decay for the fake new to shame page where there is an increasing percentage of people who get the "you've been had" page. You'd also have to be very careful to not run afoul of libel. You'll need lots of "a well-informed source..." and lots of "may" and "might" and "is expected to" language.
- cgriswald 8y agoA few things: First, you probably don’t have to flip the content. They read the headline and click share. If they click the content they read the first paragraph and skim. Just put a note at the end of the content. Second, I don’t think shaming works. I’ve seen people called out on obvious nonsense. If they’re embarrassed about it, it doesn’t stop them from sharing the next thing. Third, at best they’ll probably just learn they can’t trust your URL. I’ve got a friend from high school who is constantly sharing nonsense. I’ve also seen him be the victim of a scam. He just doesn’t have the capacity to think about what’s real or not, probably because of a combination of low IQ and high anxiety or paranoia. I can’t imagine any amount of shame helping him. Might make him worse. He may be a special case or he may not. But I’ve seen plenty of others be blasted for posting obvious nonsense and at best they are embarrassed but go with an “ends justifies the means” defense because the article talks negatively about some great right- or left-wing devil.
- undecisive 8y agoTheir conclusions don't excite me, and theorising about the reasons doesn't help. I'd like to see a few comparison studies showing the bell curves by: - age - IQ - reading speed - concentration - bias - activism - non-social-media surfing time For example, the people I would expect to see rank highly for fake news sharing: - a person with low reading speed and either a significant bias towards the conclusion or low concentration - a low-iq non-activist (less likely to have read up on the subject) - a person who only surfs social media Of course, between these categories the data will have its own correlations (age + low eyesight, iq + surfing patterns, etc) and so I'd want to see the data both with and without correcting for those correlations too. I don't know how surprising this data would be - once all the correlations are corrected for, I imagine the graph would look pretty flat.
- ThomPete 8y agoThis article is a perfect example of the incredibly sloppy and biased thinking that happens in media and which is part of the very problem it talks about. Fake news first and formost is a clickbait scam to get advertising dollars, NOT a political propaganda approach and this tendency to keep using it as if it's an actual political issue is really absurd and itself an example of what is probably more an example of sloppy news. Furthermore the insinuation that the older generation somehow is more naive than the young generation in political views only adds to the superficial and naval gazing claims.
- WhompingWindows 8y agoYou're not accounting for internal and external to the US attempts to manipulate our democracy via social media. The IRA created fake accounts to encourage tribalism and partisan thinking. It's not new for Americans or companies as well, there's been manipulating the web with bots and disinformation ourselves for years. To say it's purely clickbait is to ignore a large amount of evidence that it's also politically motivated.
- ThomPete 8y agoI didn't say it's purely clickbait I said it mostly clickbait which it is and the reason why it's being used as much as it is.
- jmcqk6 8y ago>Fake news first and formost is a clickbait scam to get advertising dollars, NOT a political propaganda approach and this tendency to keep using it as if it's an actual political issue is really absurd and itself an example of what is probably more an example of sloppy news. That's a pretty bold assertion. Let me make sure I'm getting this right. According to you, there is not a problem of people creating and spreading lies in order to forward their political agendas? That sounds like an absurd proposition from you. We can see it almost every single day, especially on platforms like facebook.
- ThomPete 8y ago
- grigjd3 8y agoI wonder how much of this is having free time and a lack of mobility.
- bananatron 8y ago#shocked
- yaya69 8y agoWho shares the most real news?
- asdff 8y agoReputable institutions, not cousin Cathy.
- threatofrain 8y agoThere’s probably more money scaring old people about dying and buying pills. When you compare to Fox health and sciences section, their political news looks reasonable. The scaring old people industry must be regulated.
- dandare 8y agoAnecdotal evidence: I remember how my 65 years old dad changed from a large-minded, world-traveling retired professor to an avid consumer of fake news in the span of fewer than two years. Yes, it was a shock, but most of all I am mortified that this could happen to me as well when I get to his age.
- cheez 8y agoI used to read the national enquirer (UFOs, Bigfoot!) religiously as a kid. I suspect there is something that appeals to people at certain stages in life. Most likely, as you get older/younger you desire stimulation. In mid-life, you're probably over-stimulated.
- dev_dull 8y agoStay unplugged from social media and especially mainstream media and you’ll be just fine.
- choochooboogalu 8y agoGather all information from primary sources? Sarcasm aside, I do agree that journals and other longer period periodicals are more reliable.
- 8y ago
- drewmol 8y agoFor a lot of those 65+ they remember when an article that claimed: 'If you * then share this with 10 of your friends' would have cost them 10 quarters and taken several days of effort to comply. They know the free postage won't last forever, so they'll use it while it lasts.
- sanmon3186 8y agoMy hypothesis is that they grew with a notion that "if it is on a newspaper, magazine or a book, it must be true", which was indeed the case when compared to digital content in today's world. It took me a long discussion to convince my Indian uncle that image of certificate (signed by director general of UNESCO) that he forwarded on WhatsApp, declaring Indian national anthem as the best national anthem in the world, can be created in 10 minutes by anyone these days.
- asdff 8y agoI think it is a little more nuanced. No one takes the tabloids at the grocery store seriously, for instance, and they've been in print forever. But, you'd trust a tabloid story your cousin sent you on facebook to check out. Suddenly you trust that tabloid source since you trust your cousin.
- smileysteve 8y ago> which was indeed the case when compared to digital content in today's world. World War 1, World War 2, Cuba, Mexico, the civil war, the Boston masacre, the boston tea party are just a few things we can point some fake and incomplete news to in America.
- malvosenior 8y agoIt depends on how you define fake news. I see most of what I'd consider fake news being shared by people under the age of 40. I'd classify most of The Verge articles as "fake news" for instance. They're politically charged clickbait/outragebait often with undisclosed relationships between the authors and subjects.
- Aromasin 8y agoWhile this is complete conjecture, I don't think the ability to ascertain truth from falsehood is uniquely age related; I believe it comes down to the age of media you were raised in. That's not to say it age doesn't play a factor at all, as cognitive function does decline as you get older. Unfortunately we don't have the data to control for generational changes, so 'older people' and 'the current older generation' are used synonymously. In my opinion, younger generations have become better accustomed to the bombardment of lies, in the form of new age marketing, that older generations didn't have growing up (at least, weren't as acutely aware of). That is compounded with the fact that people become more trusting of their chosen form of media over time [1]. If you've grown up with a small amount of media to choose from, and develop a loyalty to a certain one, it's a hard cycle to break out of. Anecdotally, it seems to me that the older people I know only consume information from 1-3 sources, whereas younger people tend to flip-flop between many different ones. So if any of that small pool of media sources becomes untrustworthy it 'poisons the water', so to speak, much quicker. To add to this, modern forms of media often have instant feedback mechanics (article comments, suggested counter-articles, up-vote/down-vote functions etc.) that can control fake news to a small extent. If someone shares fake news on HN for example, I can read the discussion and be made aware of any falsehood in the article. Traditional paper and television media does not have this control mechanism. Take note, I'd argue that this argument shouldn't apply to Facebook (which happens to be the most used website for over 50's). Their algorithm favours popularity over anything else so even if people react negatively to it (angry react), it only serves to spread fake news further. [1] https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/generations-trust/ https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/...
- bilbo0s 8y ago>I don't think the ability to ascertain truth from falsehood is uniquely age related; I believe it comes down to the age of media you were raised in... I don't know man? I think it has a whole lot more to do with the common sense of the individual. If you're the type of person who will believe that the US never landed on the moon, or that Hillary, congresspeople and bankers are sexually molesting children who are held captive in the basement of a pizzeria, then there's not much that changing a media source is gonna do for you.
- adrianlmm 8y agoAnd people younger than 30 created them.
- asdff 8y agoYup, at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersberg!
- asabjorn 8y agoDoes anyone have a link to the source used to classify some news as fake and other news as real in this paper? Whomever control that definition can shift any conclusion, similarly to how hate speech definitions is used to silence speech on platforms such as Patreon [3]. I think we should treat any conclusion made by YouGov with caution because on at least on one occasion YouGov associated themselves with people believing in and adovocating for social justice [1], so maybe they are part of the ongoing effort [2] to re-gain progressive information gateway control in a world where much information dissemination is shifted from traditional media to social networks and streaming. [1] https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/core/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/YouGov_CSJ_Polling-Results_2018.pdf https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/core/wp-content/up... [2] https://www.changetheterms.org/ https://www.changetheterms.org/ [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/patreon-crowdfunding-platform-defends-itself-amid-boycott-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/patreon-crowdfunding-platfor...
- octernion 8y agolmao i love anti social justice warriors. bless your tiny, ice-cold hearts and backwards ways.
- asabjorn 8y agoMost of us are proponents of a secular state clearly separated from religious practices, and social justice believers are religious [1] with the extra flair that they seek institutional power to enforce their beliefs in ways that violate this principle. Do you believe we should not have a secular state where people can inhabit all sorts of conflicting beliefs in the religious spehere, while resolving their grievances through the law? [1] https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-the-faith-of-social-justice/ https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- octernion 8y ago
- jameslk 8y agoHere's the study since the article didn't link directly to it: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586
- tropo 8y agoWow, that's bad. The definition of "fake news" is a list of 21 conservative web sites chosen by BuzzFeed. For some reason, BuzzFeed wasn't in that list. Unsurprisingly, by that definition, fake news is primarily spread by conservatives! Chart C shows that as the strongest result by far. Chart B, going by age, is a weaker result. Well yes, it seems that conservatives live longer (living less dangerously?) or that people turn conservative as they age. It is well-known that older people lean conservative. This study is, itself, impressively fake, just like BuzzFeed.
- thecatspaw 8y agoAre you aware that buzzfeed actually has a pretty good news section too? It doesnt pay well enough, so they also have the clickbait stuff
- tropo 8y agoBuzzFeed is the site that spread the "piss dossier" nonsense. You can't get much more fake than that without invoking aliens and Elvis.
- fzeroracer 8y agoYou mean the same dossier that has increasingly had various points of data within it proven true?
- thecatspaw 8y agoI couldnt find any article on buzzfeed regarding that, and neither have I followed that dossier so I cannot comment on that. Mind sending a few links my way?
- Buldak 8y agoThe researchers found that Republicans shared more fake news than Democrats, but they suggest that is only because recent fake news has been largely directed to support Trump (i.e. that age-susceptibility to fake news is otherwise ideologically neutral). If it turned out that conservatives as such are more susceptible to fake news, though, that might help explain why the elderly are more susceptible insofar as old people tend to be conservative.
- babyslothzoo 8y agoI find it interesting that many people, especially boomers, can go to the grocery store and recognize checkout tabloids as obvious hoaxes, yet they stumble into something much more ridiculous online and determine it to be true. They seem particularly susceptible to confirmation bias in propaganda memes and literal fake news.
- Nasrudith 8y agoI think part of it is learning "everyone knows" that Tabloids are all "batboy was impregnated by bigfoot". It doesn't require any critical thinking. Yet they fall for it because it wasn't socially embedded as "obviously fake" to them. Not to mention that sadly most people are very vulnerable to flattery of their beliefs (see the infamous Sokal Hoax).
- disease 8y agoThe online content is confirming their biases, while the tabloid is not. This is one of the oldest tricks to being a successful con man.
- sailfast 8y ago"Article with headline "makes sense" to my worldview and fits with my stereotyped understanding of elderly people so everyone piles on to comment" Congratulations. We just did the same thing this article purports most people over 65 do most of the time. This study was comprised of people sharing their Facebook profile data with a research company. I wonder what their disclaimers said when they clicked "Yes"? > “When we bring up the age finding, a lot of people say, ‘oh yeah, that’s obvious,’” co-author Andrew Guess, a political scientist at Princeton University, told The Verge. “For me, what is pretty striking is that the relationship holds even when you control for party affiliation or ideology. The fact that it’s independent of these other traits is pretty surprising to me. It’s not just being driven by older people being more conservative.” Was his going-in hypothesis that older people are more conservative? Or that hoaxes only target conservatives? I am not saying the entire study is BS, merely that everyone saying "haha yeah it must be that 65+ don't have good BS detectors because they watched Ed Murrow on TV" may not have employed their own detector 100% when reading this article.
- lordnacho 8y agoIt's not digital literacy, it's literacy. Older people grew up believing in religion, in fact they could be beaten mercilessly if they expressed doubt. They also grew up during one of the most intense ideological struggles in political history. And on top of that they were the first generation exposed to mass media, in an era where there were still relatively few alternative information sources. Basically they were ill prepared to think critically, and still are. Sorry. I love my dad but he came out a Putin fan a while back. He also thought he'd won the lottery which he'd never entered.
- 12elephant 8y agoSo, does being a Putin fan imply one has 'gone off the deep end'?
- lordnacho 8y agoIt does if you're also in exile from your birthplace due to it having become an authoritarian state.
- 12elephant 8y agoMaybe some people just prefer the authoritarian model. It is not an objective truth that non-authoritarianism > authoritarianism. That's just, like, an opinion, man. Further: when has Russia not been an authoritarian state?
- lordnacho 8y agoPoint is if you like authoritarian, why would you leave paradise? > It is not an objective truth that non-authoritarianism > authoritarianism. That's just, like, an opinion, man. Shakespeare > Marlowe is just an opinion.
- asdff 8y ago> when has Russia not been an authoritarian state For a brief time during the Yeltsin years where citizens could elect their own state governors, and not have one appointed by the Kremlin.
- ChicagoBoy11 8y agoIt has really upset me to see my father, an accomplished businessman, constantly share with me videos/news and ask questions based on information that is obviously false. I never would have believed it if you had described it to me, but for some reason the social component adds an element that gives these stories a lot more legs than they'd otherwise have
- tonymet 8y agoOnly 38% opted in, which was only ~1100 people. Moreover, the group of "older" people spread at a rate of only 11%, which was lower than other cohorts (I won't mention which). Finally, only 8.5 percent actually spread fake news, so this whole study is about about 95 people and how they spread news. Other commenters mention that the domain list is also suspicious. Clickbait science
- el_cujo 8y agoPeople are increasingly aware of fake news now and I really hope this spreads further into scrutiny on science, especially news articles about science. You really need to dig deep into the methods of a study so you can understand all of the caveats that go with its conclusions, but obviously a "news" article on a finding is going to gloss over most of that and crystallize the entire paper into one click bait sentence.
- zelon88 8y agoA almost guarantee that 100% of the people who believe clickbait fake news articles from bogus and untrustworthy sources also have never heard of the scientific method. I believe that many older people find critical thinking to be taboo, and prefer to take things at face value because they confuse passivity with wisdom. Why question something when someone will come along any minute to make you feel comfortable anyway? They tend to be wrong when they think independently because they were never any good at critical thinking to begin with, so they just parrot what they were told makes sense. What's going to keep their lives "the same." This article does a better job than I ever could explaining my reasoning... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167212439213 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/014616721243921...
- vinbreau 8y agoMy mother taught me to be autodidact. She would never answer my questions and instead told me to go get an encyclopedia (It was the 70's) and find out myself. When I spouted ignorance she would correct me. Now she's widowed. As my father declined with Alzheimer's he tuned into FOX news all day long. Oddly, he became less racist despite this because my wife is black. The more he fell in love with her as his daughter, the better person he became. My mom still watches FOX news all day long. I know this because my son is living with her right now to help her out and he tells me outrageous stuff she does with her ideas and money. She's a devout Republican now. She hated the Obamas but could never tell me why. She loves Trump, but again she can't tell me why other than she "Likes the way he talks." Any evidence of truth given to her elicits an "OK" and then she walks away. I have no idea how she went from "always look up the answer for yourself" to believing anything that fits her current worldview as shaped by the television she watches.
- nzealand 8y agoThe problem is Fox News. They have a cynical disregard for the truth. Lies are sticky. If you passively listen to lies all day, it will affect even you. Take an excerpt from this article: https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/why-lies-often-stick-better-than-truth/31048 https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/why-lies-often-st... Suppose you hear of a family of four who died after eating at Golden Gate Chinese Restaurant. The authorities investigate, and release the information that food poisoning was not the cause. Do you go out for Chinese tonight?
- bkfh 8y agoWhen I was young, I was told to not believe everything on TV. Now I tell my parents not to believe everything on the internet
- the_other_guy 8y ago>what is fake news? the news I don't like or I don't want to hear this is how pathetic our generation is
- hnruss 8y agoAlso from the article: "Users who identified as conservative were more likely than users who identified as liberal to share fake news: 18 percent of Republicans shared links to fake news sites, compared to less than 4 percent of Democrats."
- protomyth 8y agoMy Dad (mid 70s in age) shares the fake news articles because he thinks they are funny. He still cannot believe that people take so much of this crap seriously. Of course, when you have an elected representative that thinks an island will tip over if you put too many people on it, its not hard to understand where critical thinking has failed.
- deadmik3 8y agoI've been realizing more and more as I grow up that many of the old people I thought were retarded are actually playing dumb and punking me hard into getting trolled by their shenanigans, making me the retarded one
- protomyth 8y agoHe's not playing dumb or trying to punk anyone. He thinks these people are idiots and wants to share the stupid so we all can get a laugh. He's not spreading it for you to believe it. Its like the old Weekly World News that got bought and left in the diner. Its so absurd that its funny to read. I still think I have the article where the North Dakota governor sent a hit team to kill the devil. Most of the fake news these days is just as stupid.
- _pmf_ 8y agoIf you conveniently define conservative viewpoints as fake news, then yes.
- president 8y agoSeems like this could be solved by issuing large fines for publishing fake articles. There obviously needs to be more regulation on news agencies or companies that put out all this disinformation.
- ryanmetz 8y agoDiscerning whether a story is fake or not is a cognitive task. Many people over the age of 65 are in some stage of cognitive decline. It should not be surprising to anyone that they would score more poorly than young adults.
- infradig 8y agoA day after an article about fake-news research being retracted and here are people commenting enthusiasticly and gullibly about another piece of fake-news research being promulgated. It's like no one has heard of the social sciences reproducibility crisis. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
- porpoisely 8y agoNo less from theverge. It's amazing that people take theverge seriously after their "how to build a pc" fiasco. The one thing about the "fake news" hysteria is that one side consuming the fake news is accusing the other side consuming the fake news. As far as I can tell, it's all fake news and propaganda.
- bmer 8y agoDonald Trump's presidency is weird because the "mainstream media" (a term used by many, regardless of their political spectrum) began to be treated as "real news" simply because Donald Trump was calling it "fake news". People have been talking about the issues with the "mainstream media" (in particular, whether their profit motives line up with their ethical duty) for a few decades, and it all it takes is one clown to suddenly restore faith in the media? I have seen people talk about Bush like he was an okay president. It feels like many have forgotten about the responsibility of the media in promulgating the Iraq war narrative. People don't really seem to get the media actually continues to profit from its interaction with Donald Trump (those sweet, juicy views!), and continues to pass on useless information to the public, rather than actionable information which might stir the public into something other than apathy. ...something is so weird, and I am struggling to put my finger on it...
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- zozbot123 8y ago> fake-news research Says who? A voluntarily-retracted study is not "fake news" anyway. People are allowed to make mistakes.
- oldmancoyote 8y agoOne would think from this title that I share more fake news than younger people. I'm 72. I don't share news at all. What is "more fake news"? Is it that some individuals share more fake news than others or more individuals share at least some fake news? I'm sure a better title could be composed. One would think from these comments that younger people don't share fake news. There is a reason the words 'naive" and "youth" are often associated with each other. Youth trying to evaluate/judge older people is, in a word, naive itself.
- nnain 8y agoGiven the increased hostility between religion due to inflammatory social media posts -- I wonder if things are harsher now, or whether these sentiments were always there and facebook just made it easier for people to say things! Maybe, in a way, it's ok that people have shown what they truly believed in, and so our understanding of people's true belief's has been expedited.
- aussieguy1234 8y agoThis research will make it easier for purveyors of fake news to target those who are more likely to fall for it.
- raarts 8y agoHow is fake news defined? So many things people disagree with are called fake news these days.
- garfieldnate 8y agoThis is not news! There's a certain brand of conservative baby boomers in the US who are obsessed with upsetting news, and they are extremely vulnerable to fake news. Long before this whole "fake news" thing on social media came to the popular consciousness, I was already getting e-mails about the Clintons being part of an assassination plot or a certain breed of poisonous spiders living in the toilet waiting to bite your butt and kill you. I called these "old person emails" because only baby boomers would send them. It's the reason we have snopes.com. Unfortunately I sent one of the snopes articles back in a response to one of these "old person emails", and the response I got was, "snopes is a liberal site!". In the US, the people from this generation grew up fearing death by nuclear attack by communists at any moment. Even though the world has changed pretty extremely since they were young, I think the psychological effect of it never wore off for some people. Unfortunately, I find Donald Trump to be the worst possible example of this type of personality: he's always angry, he refuses to believe news that doesn't fit his angry world view, and he says everything out loud that every angry baby boomer has always dreamt they could say out loud (thus many people see him as bold, not rude).